Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are
to youtube.)

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet:
a Disneyesque Incredible Journey, only the cute animal is a young boy?
Adapted from a book thought to be un-adaptable, and they may have been
right.

Some Kind Of Beautiful
(later retitled Lessons in Love): tries to look like something more
than a romantic comedy, and may even succeed. If it manages to
continue not quite to fit in the standard pigeonholes, there might be
something to it. (Though obviously a 64-year-old man can't be paired
with women anywhere near his own age. That would just be perverse.)

The Dressmaker: Tamara
Drewe in rural Australia? Might be amusing, but Kate Winslet can play
a role like this in her sleep, and looks as though she is.

The Intern: golly, old
people might have something to contribute to the corporate machine
too! Retirement, what's that? De Niro plays a smiling codger. Yay.

Stonewall: of course
you can't tell a historical story without having a made-up character
for the audience to sympathise with. (Because last year's film Selma
never happened.) Does a decent job of describing "where Pride began",
by focusing entirely on pretty young gay white men just as
the modern event tends to.

Deadpool: yay, Ryan
Reynolds is wheeled out to destroy another superhero, after his
excellent work caused everyone to lose interest in Green Lantern back
in 2011. And guess what, it's another lovable schmuck who gets
superpowers. Gee, I haven't seen a trailer with that story since, ooh,
last month.

Everest:
mountain-climbing action has developed its own set of cliché shots at
this point. Huge expensive cast, and for what? Looks as if basically
the entire plot is in the trailer anyway.

Solace: might be
generic horror, but looks potentially more interesting than that. Yes,
all right, Anthony Hopkins helps, but the rest of the cast is solid
too, and the challenge of how to tackle someone who can precog just
what you're going to do is an interesting one. Might even be good.

The Last Witch Hunter:
hang on, you're sure Nic Cage isn't in this? OK, lots of pretty
effects, and Michael Caine will be giving it the full Michael Caine as
he always does, but this was going to be directed by Bekmambetov, it's
just his sort of gonzo supernatural nuttery, and he was replaced by
someone who hasn't made a film since 2010's very forgettable The
Crazies. Sound and fury.

Visions: secret creepy
suburban witchcraft? Great! But what's the betting that our heroine's
complaints will be ignored because she has Crazy Pregnancy Hormones?
Those women, you know, always making stuff up. I'm dubious about this
one but could be persuaded.

About Ray: transgender
is the new homosexual? I suppose it's a good or at least a necessary
thing that stories are told about the transition. Maybe it won't take
as long before we get stories where transgender people are just part
of the world.

Jem and the Holograms:
you can get famous, but Fame is Hard. Who knew? With bonus cute robot.
Because everyone was crying out for a revival of the 1980s
doll-peddling cartoon series.

Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List:
teenage D'Rama. Nothing here appeals. Bland film is sometimes worse
than bad film. (Actually, bad film these days tends to be blanded down
so that you can't even enjoy it as bad any more.)

Shanghai: John Cusack's
taking a lot of Chinese cash these days. Might be interesting, but
looks kind of overblown, especially with what seems distressingly
likely to turn into a love triangle.

The Anomaly:
cheap-looking SF conspiracy action. I don't know the cast; this might
be amusing if they get away from the generic-looking script.

Victor Frankenstein:
well, yes, if you move the story from a remote castle to London,
you're going to get attention from the police. But it looks as though
this is stripping out all the interesting stuff and turning the
monster into something that juat goes "rar" and kills you. Oh well.
(Also: where are the women?)

The Martian: I quite
liked the book and this certainly looks good. Drew Goddard (The Cabin
in the Woods) wrote the screenplay as planned, but Ridley Scott is
now directing. That could be good or bad, depending on whether he's on
form; the last space film he did was Prometheus, after all.

The Witch: early
American settler horror. Looks fairly reliant on standard scares; the
bit with the baby is decent, but could have happened in the modern
day. What justifies the period?

The Final Girls: oh,
that looks really quite interesting. Better if the actual Final Girls
can be the stars of their own film rather than generic comic relief
guy, but this still seems to have some promise.

Bill: just in case you
didn't laugh enough at Anonymous, here's one that's meant to be
funny. As long as there's good stuff along with the slapstick, could
be decent.

Ashby: yet another
generic useless young man learns Valuable Lessons About Life. This
time his Magical Negro is a retired CIA assassin. Eh, might be fun,
but probably not.

Kill Your Friends: even
more horrible people doing horrible things to each other, with bonus
women as set dressing. The music industry is nasty, who knew?

Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse:
promising title, but it turns out that "scouts" in Hollywood-speak
means "podgy un-lovable losers". I suppose I shouldn't be surprised,
but the supposed humour of the premise leaves me cold.

En Equilibre: a very
generic-looking story, but a decent cast might salvage it.

Love the Coopers:
didn't National Lampoon do this years ago? Only with a smaller cast so
that everyone got enough time for their own story arc.

Youth: looks as if it's
trying to be Oscar-bait. Will it have anything to say, or just a
succession of Trailer Moments?

A Brilliant Young Mind:
Hollywood is very bad at depicting smart people (most scriptwriters
have never met one, after all), so it always comes back to "they're
just like us mostly". Weirdo people who can do sums can find love too,
just like their (divorced/widowed) moms, so that's all right then. I'm
really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard.

He Named Me Malala:
it's an impressive story, but this part of it seems to strip out any
possible dramatic tension.

Risen: Christian™-brand
filmmaking at its biggest budget and, to be fair, some of the better
acting I've seen in these things. Though that's not saying much. With
bonus un-biblical miracles!

Rock the Kasbah:
doesn't matter where they're American or Afghan, what women really
need is a much older man to "represent" them.

I try to emphasise the positive, but when it's clearly Extruded Movie Product that can be a bit of a challenge.

I watch the trailers because I'm interested in film, and just occasionally there's something that really appeals to me (The Martian this time round, and Solace, Visions and The Anomaly also look potentially interesting). There are three or four youtube channels which collectively carry most of the vaguely mainstream trailers which get released.

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